Eileen

Jackie didn’t like it.

He was new in town. Had been trying to get in with the good teams for months. Only been even a little successful for a couple of weeks. So he wasn’t going to say anything and ruin what little progress he’d made. But still.

Jackie didn’t like it.

He was sitting in the diner booth with Teddy, Alphonse, and Ro. The back of the restaurant, that was good. No one else around, that was also good. The jukebox in the corner was going, a little too loud. Very good. They could talk in soft, comfortable tones without being overheard. It wasn’t a large place, but it was old. The walls were sturdy wood, none of that cheap crap that bounces every single sound anyone makes into the ears of everyone else. Low ceilings. Bright lights. Bright colors, too. The pink and blue pattern of the booths were loud enough to cover up their conversation on their own.

No one could hear their plans. Except the waitress.

Waitress and owner, the others kept reminding him. Eileen. A woman probably past retirement age, with completely white hair, a round belly, and calves that slid into the foot without a hint of ankle. Jackie never understood how someone on her feet all day like a waitress-

-and owner.

They’d said it enough he was correcting himself. Whatever. It didn’t matter what she did. Jackie just wanted her gone.

“It’s going to be tomorrow,” Teddy was saying shortly after they sat down. “The guy they got working security on Thursdays, his name is Gino, and he, according to some of his former coworkers, fucking sucks.”

“Slip on by?” Alphonse said.

Teddy nodded. “And if he sees us, a bribe. Not even a particularly good one. That’s the easy part. Next-”

“How you boys doing?”

Jackie had practically jumped out of his seat. She’d snuck up on him, sliding up the tile on whisper-soft shoes. The others were not surprised. Nor were they as annoyed as Jackie. They were all smiles.

“Eileen, my love, my light,” Alphonse said, taking her hand and kissing the back of it. “How is it you get younger every day?”

“Oh, Alphie, stop, you’re making me blush,” she said, putting a hand to her cheek.

“How’s the grandbabies, Eileen?” Ro asked.

“Little shits, always. One of them got a week of detention for pushing a kid off a slide. And his mom is calling me like, oh, you have to talk to him, he doesn’t listen to me. And I said, I couldn’t even raise you right if you don’t know how to discipline a nine year old, you think I can help?”

The table laughed with her. Jackie gave a pittance of a chuckle, to not seem rude, but inside he was fuming.

Is this business or Sunday brunch?

“Don’t think I’ve seen you around?” Eileen said, giving Jackie a look.

“He’s from a couple states over,” Teddy said. “Jackie, Eileen. Eileen, Jackie.”

She shook his hand with a firm grip. “Friends of them, friends of mine, etc. You working on something?”

The shock Jackie felt at the question was only surpassed as Teddy actually began to answer.

“A couple of days from now,” Teddy said, barely heard over the sound of Jackie’s heart trying to lub and dub at the same time.

“Good, then. Maybe Alphie will be able to pay up his tab,” Eileen said with a sly wink.

They all laughed again, like it was some sort of TV variety hour, and then Eileen wandered away without taking any orders.

“Dude, what the hell?” Jackie hissed at Teddy, keeping an eye on the woman as she walked away.

Teddy shrugged, confused. “What?”

“You just telling everybody about the crimes were planning to commit? Did you tell the bank teller, too?”

“Oh, relax,” Alphonse said, leaning back in his chair and chewing on a toothpick. “That’s’ not everybody. That’s Eileen.”

“Yeah? And?”

“And Eileen don’t talk,” Ro said. Her jaw was set, a fire behind her eyes. She was taking Jackie’s distrust personally.

“What, she your grandma or something?”

“Sort of. She treats everyone like her kids.” Ro leaned forward on the table, her eyes burning into his. “And she. Don’t. Talk.”

Maybe I should have picked another city.

But Jackie didn’t pick another city. He picked this city. And his current funds did not support picking up again to another. He needed jobs first. He had a job sitting in front of him. It would get him a good amount of silver in his pocket. As long as a tottering old waitress (and owner) didn’t blow the whole thing.

Jackie kept his mouth shut. Let the others do the talking. Even when that talking was directly in front of Eileen as she refilled coffees and dished out unasked for pieces of pie.

The pie was good.

Jackie still didn’t like it.

---

Jackie was only there because he got turned around.

The shithole apartment he was living in was two blocks east and three blocks north. East. East. Something he only remembered after he’d gone four blocks west looking for Oakwood Street. New city didn’t make any fucking sense.

He had to cross back past Eileen’s diner. From across the street he watched as the last little light in the front went out and Eileen came through the door. She spent a few seconds locking up, and then turned to go home.

She was met by two of the most undercover-looking assholes Jackie had ever seen. He could spot the shoes a mile off.

I fucking knew it.

He pressed himself against the wall of the bakery, in a spot of darkness between the street lamps. The city was quiet this late at night, and the words carried to him on the still air.

“Ah, if it isn’t my two favorite detectives,” Eileen said with a bright smile. “Did you want a piece of pie? We just closed but I can have some sent to the precinct tomorrow?”

“Cut the crap, Eileen,” said one of them. “You know why we’re here.”

The other one was holding up pictures. Taken of the diner, maybe? Mugshots?

“You know who these people are,” said the one holding the pictures.

“No, I don’t,” Eileen said.

And she said it with so much chutzpah that Jackie completely believed her.

The detectives weren’t buying it.

“We know you do, because of this,” said the one holding the pictures, switching to a different set.

First set mugshots, second set surveillance, Jackie thought to himself. They’re taking pictures of us coming and going. She’s going to crumble.

“Never seen them.”

The first detective sighed. “Eileen, you are in these pictures.”

Eileen shrugged. “I have a lot of customers. I don’t remember every face.”

“We have many pictures of them here. They’re regulars.”

“I guess I’m not that good at customer service. Everyone looks the same to me. The two of you look the same to me, although one of you smells worse. Can’t figure out which it is, though. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s late.”

She tried to walk past them when the first one grabbed her arm and started to cuff her.

“We’re taking you in for obstruction,” he said.

Eileen simply sighed and let him cuff her without movement. “This again.”

“We can stop. I’ll uncuff you, you can go home to your warm bed.”

Eileen turned as much as she could to stare directly into his face.

“No English.”

Jackie watched the three of them walk off, his mouth hanging open like a regular fly catcher.

---

The sun was barely up when Eileen came toddling down the precinct stairs, rubbing her wrists. She didn’t look up from the ground until she hit the sidewalk, and then her eyes widened.

“Jackie, right? You posted my bail?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I saw-”

“Not here, dear. Let’s walk. My partner should have opened the diner for the morning by now.”

Eileen wouldn’t let him speak until they were a couple of blocks away.

“I saw what they did last night.”

“Oh, pish,” she said, waving a hand. “That’s not new. Seems like I’m in holding for obstruction at least once a month. I’ve become friends with the overnight crew. I need to go back later today, actually, Alvarez’s wife had their baby early and I made him the cutest blanket, do you want to see a picture?”

Jackie was surprised to discover that actually, yes, he did want to see the picture.

“Anyway, don’t worry about me, hon,” she said, patting his arm. “Although I do appreciate the concern.”

“You didn’t talk,” Jackie said. “The others, they told me, but I didn’t believe them.”

Eileen shrugged. She was holding onto his arm now, slowing them down, but Jackie let her. He knew from experience a night in a holding cell did nothing for the legs and back.

“Snitches get stitches, and the only stitches I care for are in my knitting.” She laughed airily at her own joke.

“I have to know…why? Did you…have someone in the life? Someone who got turned in?”

“Ha! No. My husband helped me with the diner until he passed and my children…one’s a CPA and the other one is a stay at home mom.”

“The one with the kid in detention?”

“Uh huh.”

Jackie shook his head. “Full time mom and still the kid’s a prick. Oh, uh, sorry.”

Eileen patted his arm. “No, don’t be sorry. I love him, but he is a prick. Hopefully he’ll grow out of it.”

They walked the rest of the way to the diner in comfortable silence, although Jackie was still desperate to find out what had happened in her life that would lead her to the staunch defense of criminals.

“Come in, I’ll put on some coffee. On the house, of course.”

He sat at the counter as she put on a fresh pot. Her partner, a middle aged man with a bald head, waved at her through the window to the kitchen.

“Put some eggs and bacon on for my friend, Mikey,” she said. “You eat bacon, right?”

“With gusto,” Jackie said.

She poured his coffee and sighed.

“I got no reason to do it,” she said. “No tragic history, no dead kid, nothing like that. I just don’t like cops. Honestly, fuck ‘em.”

“Well,” Jackie said, holding up his coffee cup. “Cheers to that.”

Jackie still didn’t know much about Eileen, the owner of a crime-filled diner. But any broad that could stare at a cop inches away and tell them in so many words to go fuck themselves was surely a friend indeed.

---